Source: http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/index.html

The scientific community saw the need to catch the attention of policy makers and the media back to red alert on climate change after the signal had turned yellow or green in the eyes of many who interpreted a decade-long pause or stop of global warming: Advancing decadal-scale climate prediction in the North Atlantic sector by N. S. Keenlyside1, M. Latif1, J. Jungclaus2, L. Kornblueh2 & E. Roeckner2. (Source: a commenter at Realclimate).

The Globe and Mail has just released an article by Gerard Wynn, Reuters, entitled “Global cooling theories put scientists on guard” (May 9, 2008 at 2:12 PM EDT) to describe how global warming alarmist scientists showed some concern that this paper may be widely seen as a reason for policy makers and climate skeptics to undermine the public awareness of catastrophic global warming. They seemed to have felt uncomfortable that such a paper predicting “cool weather” on a global and decadal scale, that is widely seen a “noise” in a long-term warming trend and which may be an undesirable distraction from the AGW scare, was released and published in the ‘Nature’ magazine. So what did some climate scientists do about the looming public opinion that could marginalize global warming as a threat? They placed a bet:

“The bet we propose is very simple and concerns the specific global prediction in their Nature article. If the average temperature 2000-2010 (their first forecast) really turns out to be lower or equal to the average temperature 1994-2004 (*), we will pay them € 2500. If it turns out to be warmer, they pay us € 2500. This bet will be decided by the end of 2010. We offer the same for their second forecast: If 2005-2015 (*) turns out to be colder or equal compared to 1994-2004 (*), we will pay them € 2500 – if it turns out to be warmer, they pay us the same… (Stefan Rahmstorf at http://www.realclimate.org).

It remains to be seen if Prof. Rahmstorf’s bet offer to Keenlyside et al. (who are by no means AGW skeptics) was a wise move to dispel the doubts of skeptics regarding an unrevocable global warming trend. Because the first part of the bet was global average temperature of 2000-2010 (future or past??) as opposed to 1994-2004 (past). That’s why the blogger tamino who is known as “Nasa boss Hansen’s bulldog” exclaimed:

They’d be suckers to take your bet, especially the first part. The Nov.1994 - Oct.2004 average for HadCRUT3v is 0.3594, the average from Nov.2000 to the present is 0.4246. This means that for them to win the 2000-2010 part, the average temperature from now to Oct.2010 would have to drop to 0.1722. ‘Tain’t likely.

So many people wondered if the authors of this decadal climate prediction accept the bet or not.

Well, this is what Gerard Wynn, Reuters, wrote:

…The original Nature article’s lead author, Leibniz Institute’s Noel Keenlyside, acknowledged on Friday [May 9, 2008] that recent data showed much more warming that he had forecast through 2007, but he stood by a “stabilization” of temperatures from 2005 to 2015.

He blamed shifts in ocean currents and temperatures, thought also to be the cause of the plateau in temperatures since 1998…

So after the authors had set the start-up temperature before running the climate model, most of 2007 was globally very warm before a sharp drop towards the end of the year. And now? There is another tooth of global warming being extracted:

The partial cooling of Antarctica contrary to what models simulate. The problem? Water vapor feedback.